Today, I have two new thoughts about jQuery in Magento.
Firstly, I will stop using a jQuery plugin called jQuery corner. It is a great plugin though. The reason of withdraw is jQuery corner plugin rounds elements with any radius I can specify on the fly. Once upon a time I thought dynamic cornering a great feature. However, jQuery UI comes with ui-corner classes. It has fixed value of radius for all round corners. It does not let me round different elements to different radius, but guarantees the consistency. In this case, consistency is much more important than flexibility. When I do want make exceptional larger or smaller radius for some kinds of elements (one or two kinds at most), I can code css just for that class.
Secondly, I will start a new Magento module project called Jqol. It reads “JQuery themerOLler”, or “JQuery OnLine” (whatever you feel easier to remember). I am inspired by how easy it is to use jQuery Themeroller to build and change the look and feel of a website. It is a pity Magento does not come with jQuery. I keep mention it because I can not live without jQuery (for now). I implemented jQuery the very first thing when I started diving into Magento. While jQuery is getting stronger and more popular, I would like it play more important role in Magento. Therefore, I will let jQuery Themeroller control the look and feel for the top menu, buttons, accordion, tabs, etc. I can imagine a lot of benefits from this module: cleaner code, more semantic, and I (or even visitors to my sites) can switch the jQuery themes easily.